Why: This week, Tarantino brings his trademark snappy dialogue back to theaters with his Nazi-hunting fantasy "Inglourious Basterds" (see the trailer here). It was the writer-director's "Pulp Fiction" screenplay, however, that earned him his first -- and, so far, only -- Oscar. It's easy to see why in what is his finest film to date, a thoroughly rewatchable -- and ridiculously quotable -- masterpiece.

Click through to the jump to read The Times-Picayune's original 1994 review.

By David Baron, Movie critic, The Times-Picayune
Friday, October 14, 1994

It seemed almost impossible that Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" - the writer-director's followup to "Reservoir Dogs" - could live up to its extravagant advance billing. But the winner of the 1994 Cannes Film Festival turns out to be an almost deliriously entertaining film, an audaciously original crime yarn by a supremely skilled magician of the medium.

Tarantino toys with crime film conventions, bends structure almost whimsically to his will, and turns cliches of all kinds inside out in the course of "Fiction, " a 2 1/2 -hour tour-de-force of personal style that (with the help of an extraordinary cast) creates more memorable characters than any other movie this year.

Glibly described as an "anthology film" because it's composed of three intertwining stories, "Fiction" (which gets its title from the lurid crime novels of the '30s and '40s) is really more like a three-ring circus with Tarantino, the ringmaster, directing one's attention first to one ring, then to another.

As the tripartite feature opens, two romantically involved young thieves, Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) and Pumpkin (Tim Roth), are contemplating sticking up the Los Angeles diner where they're having breakfast. The duo's conversation forms the frame story for Tarantino's intricate narrative, which will ultimately come full circle as it dovetails his three principal stories.

In the first of these, "Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife, " hitman Vega (John Travolta) is asked by underworld boss Wallace (Ving Rhames) to look after the latter's flirtatious wife Mia (Uma Thurman) in his absence. The assignment proves dicey for the baby sitter when the "baby" overdoses on his private stash of heroin.

The second story, "The Good Watch, " tells of a boxer (Bruce Willis) who has promised Wallace he'll throw a big fight. The boxer has a better idea - which involves fleeing to the South Seas with his French girlfriend ("Henry and June's" Maria de Madeiros) - but finds himself stymied when she absent-mindedly forgets to pack a watch that has sentimental value because it belonged to his war-hero father.

In the last yarn, "Jules, Vincent, Jimmie and the Wolf, " Vega and his partner, Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) are nearly killed as they retrieve a mysterious suitcase from a pair of double-crossing amateur crooks. Jules, who's something of a mystic, is convinced that their narrow escape is an act of God - and vows to renounce his criminal calling after returning the suitcase to its rightful owner. That decision will be put to the test, however, when he and Vega go for breakfast at the very same diner where things are about to turn ugly ...

The seed for each of these individual stories is rooted, of course, in garden-variety pulp fiction. But Tarantino takes each idea and alchemizes it into a darkly hilarious drama, orchestrating incidents with an eye for the outrageous and inventing supporting players (like the fastidious mob fixer played by Harvey Keitel) who confound one's expectations at every turn.

Simply stated, Tarantino's supple, richly textured dialogue outclasses that of anyone else now writing for the American screen (remember the riff about Madonna that opened "Dogs"?), and he uses it to develop lead characters who, far from being purely evil (and thus dismissable) are in some sense in a state of moral flux.

This is especially true of Jules, who emerges thanks to Jackson's electrifying performance as perhaps the most riveting figure in "Fiction, " but it's also the case with the boxer (splendidly essayed by Willis) and perhaps even with the weary, drug-addicted Vega. (It's nice to see Travolta, an actor who's seldom found deserving roles, in a part that actually showcases what he can do.)

Such an embarrassment of riches is "Fiction" that I've neglected to mention David Wasco's dazzling production design (Jack Rabbit Slim's, the movie-themed eatery where Vega and Mia have their "date," is a satiric phantasmagoria inspired by Pop Art and nostalgia, while a gun shop where the boxer encounters Wallace is a nightmarish distillation of urban paranoia). And while I'm counting blessings, here's a salute to Andrzej Sekula's artfully garish cinematography, and to Sally Menke's hair-trigger editing.

Toward the end of "Pulp Fiction," after one of the major characters meets an untimely demise, Tarantino engineers a stunning flip-flop in chronology that results in the character's re-appearance (with an added resonance born of our knowledge of his fate) at an earlier time. It's a bravura feat, to say the least, yet it typifies both the daring and the gift for thinking "cinematically" that make this actor-turned-director such a natural.